Nothing is worse when you’re in the army than
to have to retreat across a foreign country with the enemy nipping at your
heels. That’s what Sir John Moore’s
British troops are doing in the opening months of 1809. They’re trudging through northwest Spain (Galicia province), trying to stay ahead of Napoleon’s dreaded dragoons, and hoping they
make it to Portugal before the French catch up to them.

It’s
even worse if you have the bad luck to be part of the rearguard of Moore's army. You have to turn around, give
token resistance to the French dragoons chasing you, then turn tail yet again,
and hope that not too many of your comrades (including yourself) get killed carrying
out the delaying action.

And even worse than that is if you’re a lieutenant in that ragtag rearguard
group, lacking the loyalty and support of the soldiers you’re giving orders
to. After all, you’ve been promoted from
within the ranks, and everyone knows that leadership skills are something that
only highbred men from the upper classes possess. And you aren't one of those.

So
they've made you a quartermaster to keep you from mucking things up. Procuring food, clothing, and other supplies
for the honest-to-goodness fighting men.
Let’s just hope the other officers stay alive so that you don’t have to
be put into any meaningful command.

Sharpe’s Riflesis set in what is known as the
“Peninsular War” (the Wikipedia article on it is here), which, quite
frankly, I’d never heard of. This is
embarrassing since I’m a history buff. There’s
lots of action, and it starts immediately.
The brutality is vivid, with plenty of blood and gore, but hey, war is
dirty, and this one was especially nasty.

There
are two main story lines: Sharpe (British) and his crew trying to escape the
French, and Vivar (Spanish) and his crew trying to safeguard a
mysterious trunk (which I thought was a macguffin at first). while also being pursued by the French Vivar's and Sharpe’s paths cross pretty quickly, which is not a spoiler, then continue as an on-again/off-again alliance.

The character studies are as fascinating as the warfare. Sharpe is a great anti-hero: hated by his men
and inferior in leadership skills to both Vivar and Rifleman Harper. Heck, even Sgt. Williams commands more
respect than Sharpe. And the chief bad
guy, the French Colonel Pierre de l’Eclin, is a worthy enemy, outthinking and
outfoxing Sharpe every step of the way.
I like it when an antagonist is on equal footing with the hero.

The story is written in “English” as opposed to “American”, so you get
words like waggon, sabre, ageing, picquets, grey, foetid, and doxie. That's always a plus for me. There’s also some cussing, but hey, war is
hell.

There is also a secondary religious motif throughout the story.
Catholic France is brutalizing Catholic Spain, and Protestant England
finds itself an uneasy Spanish ally. Sharpe
himself can best be called an Unbeliever, and some of his Irish underlings are
Catholic to boot. Bernard Cornwell
treats all these religious viewpoints with remarkable balance, something you
rarely see in novels nowadays.

The ending has some nice twists, including the revealing of the contents
of the strongbox, and everything ends with a climactic battle. Despite being part of a 24-book series, this
is a standalone novel.

Kewlest New Word...

Doxie(n.)
: floozy

Others : byre(n.); rumbustious(adj.).

Excerpts...

They were the
sting in the army’s tail. If they were
lucky this day no Frenchman would bother them, but the probability was that,
sometime in the next hour, the enemy vanguard would appear. That vanguard would be cavalry on tired
horses. The French would make a token
attack, the Riflemen would fire a couple volleys; then, because neither side
had an advantage, the French would let the greenjackets trudge on. It was soldiering; boring, cold, dispiriting,
and one or two Riflemen and one or two Frenchmen would die because of it.(pg. 16)

“Mind you, I knew
an officer in India who converted the heathen to Christianity,” Sharpe said
helpfully, “and he was most successful.”

“Mad as a hatter,
sir. One of the Royal Irish, and they’ve
all got wormscrew wits.”

“But you say he
was successful?”

“He threatened to
blow their heads off with a musket unless they were baptized, sir. That queue went twice around the armoury and
clear back to the guardhouse.”(pg.
111)

“I’m sure God did his best, but where was the sense in putting
Ireland plum next to England?” (pg.
262)

For
some reason, I thought this was the opening book in the series, but instead I
wallowed into the storyline at Book 6.
Bernard Cornwell gives bits and pieces of the backstory, mostly Sharpe’s
prior wartime activities in India, and his unwanted promotion to lieutenant. It was also obvious that several of Sharpe’s
Riflemen comrades had been introduced in earlier books. But I never felt like I was missing crucial background information, and that was a real plus.

It
should also be mentioned that Cornwell didn’t pen this series in
chronological order, so even those who have read the books in the series as soon as they were published have had to do some jumping around timeline-wise. Wikipedia gives the chronological and
literary order of the books here). Since I plan to read some more of the series,
it is nice to know that I don’t have to worry about which order I read them in.

9 Stars. I’ve been meaning to check out Bernard
Cornwell for quite some time, and it was a real treat to finally get acquainted with his works. He is a
prolific writer of Historical Fiction, and I have two more of his books, set in
England during the Dark Ages, awaiting my attention on my Kindle. I doubt it will be long before the next
review of one of his books appears on this blog.

Saturday, May 20, 2017

2008;
437 pages. Full Title : A Voyage Long and Strange: On The Trail Of Vikings,
Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America. New Author? : Yes. Genre : Non-Fiction; U.S. History; Travelogue. Overall Rating : 9*/10.

“Hey, tell me everything you remember about
the earliest days of Europeans exploring what is now the United States.”

“Okay, ‘Columbus sailed the ocean blue, in fourteen hundred
ninety-two’. Oh yeah, then the Pilgrims
or somebody landed on Plymouth Rock.
Around 1620, as I recall.”

“Very good. But there’s a
128-year gap in between those two dates.
What was going on during that century-and-a-quarter after Columbus and
before the Pilgrims?”

“I
dunno. Cortez and Pizarro, maybe. But that was down in Mexico and South
America. Say, what was going on up here in
North America during that time?”

That’s what this book is all about.

What’s To Like...

A Voyage Long And
Strange chronicles Tony Horwitz’s
efforts to answer the question posed above. Its 13 chapters are divided into three
logical and by-and-large chronological sections: Discovery,
Conquest, and Settlement,
plus a great Prologue that details the Norsemen (there
was more than one) stumbling onto Newfoundland a half a millennium before
Columbus, but not staying.

Tony
Horwitz will inevitably remind you of Bill Bryson: both recount travels they
have taken, with wit and information that will keep your interest in high
gear. But Horwitz mostly drives while
Bryson mostly walks, and Horwitz focuses more on History, whereas Bryson seems
more into Local Culture. I enjoy both
authors, and being a History buff, I really liked riding along with Horwitz
here as he sought to travel the same paths of explorers, conquistadors, and
settlers.

You’ll learn lots of fascinating bits of trivia along the way. For instance, Plymouth was not the first
English colony here (Fort St. George was); the Pilgrims were not
the first to settle in Massachusetts (Cuttyhunk was, in 1602); and Ponce de Leon wasn’t
looking for the Fountain of Youth (he was searching for gold, like every other
conquistador).

The sections alternate between Historical accounts about the brave and
the foolish who came in search of gold and glory; and Horwitz’s Personal
accounts, as he tries to “feel what they felt”, adjust to local culture, and
sift through the tourist-drawing myths and legends that have sprung up since
then. You’ll chuckle as he experiences a
sweat lodge, endures the tropical weather in the Dominican Republic, and gasp
as he tackles the mighty Mississippi River in a rickety canoe.

The text is sprinkled with some very kewl maps and pictures. You’ll meet lots of park rangers, museum
guides, tourist shop owners, and Historical Society reenactors. They all have stories to tell. A couple cuss words do occasionally arise in
Horwitz’s conversations with these folk, but I thought it set the tone quite aptly.

Caonabo shook his
head. “This is very bad.” Chicharrones,
he said, were deep-fried pork skins with gristly flesh and fat attached, flavored
with road fumes and flies. Though
popular with the Dominicans, the dish was famously lethal to foreigners. “Eat just a little bit and you regret it for
the rest of your life, which isn’t long,” Caonabo said.

“I ate two
plates.”(loc. 1907)

I wasn’t sure I
followed his argument. “So you’re saying
we should honor myth rather than fact?” I asked.

“Precisely.” The reverend smiled benignly, as I imagined
he might at a bewildered parishioner.
“Myth is more important than history.
History is arbitrary, a collection of facts. Myth we choose, we create, we perpetuate.”

He spooned up the
last of his succotash. “The story here
may not be correct, but it transcends truth.
It’s like religion – beyond facts.
Myth trumps fact, always does, always has, always will.”(loc. 6569)

Kindle Details...

A
Voyage Long And Strangecurrently sells for $9.99 at Amazon, although
Santa Claus brought it to me as a gift last Christmas.
Santa’s remarkably up-to-date, technology-wise. Tony Horwitz has a number of other books of
the same genre, all in the range of $9.99-$12.99, including Blue Latitudes,
which Santa also brought me this past Christmas.

“Estamos jodidos.” (“We’re f*cked.” (loc. 1307)

I
was pleasantly surprised that I knew of most of the main characters that roamed
around American in 1492-1620. Coronado,
De Soto, John Smith, etc. But there were
also a bunch that I’d never heard of – Bjarni, Onate, Narvaez, Jean Ribault,
Pedro Menendez, and Bartholomew Gosnold, to namedrop a few of them. And there was a whole section of the French
vs. the Spanish duking it out to the death, from the Carolinas and Florida, respectively,
that was totally new to me.

I
also thoroughly liked the way Tony Horwitz wraps up A
Voyage Long and Strange, wherein
he weighs the pluses and minuses of telling the true facts about these early
explorers (warts
and all) versus promoting the legends and mystique that have cropped
up long afterward. While he (and I)
naturally lean towards historical accuracy, he nevertheless admits he can see
some merit in the fanciful tales.

9 Stars.
Tony Horwitz came highly recommended by
one of my bosses who is also a History buff, and I was in no way disappointed
by this, my introduction to his books.
Subtract ½star
if you’re not particularly keen of Bill Bryson books, but still like to read
Historical Non-Fiction.

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Ah,
multiverses! They're such a wonderful new device
for writers of science fiction, particularly those who want to explore what
alternate timelines would entail. And
modern-day Quantum Physics predicts such a thing, although, since we can
theoretically never detect them, much less travel to them, their existence or
non-existence is rather moot.

And
since they’re such a hot new sci-fi topic, the question arises: who was the
first author to incorporate them into a science fiction novel, and how long ago
did it happen?

Well, Wikipedia indicates the concept was first proposed by Erwin
Schrodinger, he of the cat fame, in 1952 during a lecture in Dublin. And who are we to argue with Wikipedia?

So
it is curious that, as far back as 1948, H. Beam Piper was writing short
stories and novellas featuring multiverses galore wherein a few of them (well, only one
of them, to be exact) had succeeded in finding the trick jumping
from one dimension to another.

H.
Beam Piper had his own word for this phenomenon; he called it Paratime.
And just like the Prime Directive in the Star Trek series, rule Number
One is: Don’t ever EVER let the less-technological universes (which is all
the other dimensions)know that such a thing as Paratime exists. Cuz if you do, the Paratime Police will be called
in, and you don’t want to mess with them.

What’s To Like...

The
book is actually an anthology of five short stories, ranging from 25 to 112 pages,
that H. Beam Piper wrote in the 1948-1955 years, all set in his Paratime multiverse. This is “pure” dimension hopping; there’s no
time-travel or geography-jumping. You
can land in another timeline, but you’ll still be at the same spot on Earth,
and at the same time it is now.

H.
Beam Piper divides the infinite alternate universes into five “levels”. Level One is where the Paratimers originate
from, and our dimension is a Level Four universe.
Which means we’re one step up from the bottom rung of the civilization
ladder.

Briefly, the five stories are:

“He Walked Around The Horses”.
(1948). Epistolary in style, and
based on the historical Benjamin Bathurst incident. See below.

“Police Operation”. (1948). Introduces two recurring characters - Tortha
Karf and Verkan Vall. Also includes a
Venusian nighthound, which you can see on the book cover above.

“Last Enemy”. (1950). An interesting look at reincarnation, and
introduces the other main recurring character, Hadron Dalla.

“Time Crime". (1955). The longest story in the book, it focuses on
slave trading and has the most detailed look at the Paratime’s First
Level world.

“Temple Trouble”. (1951). The Paratime folks exploit Uranium deposits
on a different universe using the cover of a religious sect.

My
favorite story was “Time Crime”, which is also the longest one. There is a generalintroduction to the book at the very beginning, which I found to be quite skippable.But the shorter introductions at the beginning of each story
were fascinating.The details in the
stories reveal their age.Cigarette-smoking is a common habit, “futuristic” videos still need a
projector and a screen, and the slave-trading in alternate dimensions only involve white overseers and black slaves.Just once I’d like to see that color combination reversed.

Despite
the slavery, the stories are essentially G-rated, with the lone other exception
being the use of the word “phallic”. It
helps to remember that the target audience for 1950’s science fiction was
almost exclusively juvenile-YA boys. The
stories are all standalones, and apparently all appeared in various sci-fi
journals way back when.

Kewlest New Word...

Antiphonally(adv.)
: in a musical manner which consists of two semi-independent choirs in
interaction, often singing alternate musical phrases.

Excerpts...

In November 1809,
an Englishman named Benjamin Bathurst vanished, inexplicably and utterly.

He was en route
to Hamburg from Vienna, where he had been serving as his government’s envoy to
the court of what Napoleon had left of the Austrian Empire. At an inn in Perleburg, in Prussia, while
examining a change of horses for his coach, he casually stepped out of sight of
his secretary and his valet. He was not
seen to leave the inn yard. He was not
seen again, ever.

At least, not in
this continuum... (pg.
14, and based on a historical occurrence.
Wiki him.)

“At least, you’ll
be getting away from police work. I
don’t suppose they have anything like police on the Dwarma Sector?”

“Oh, no; they
don’t even have any such concept,” Bronnath Zara said. “When somebody does something wrong, his
neighbors all come and talk to him about it till he gets ashamed, then they all
forgive him and have a feast. They’re
lovely people, so kind and gentle. But
you’ll get awfully tired of them in about a month. They have absolutely no respect for anybody’s
privacy. In fact, it seems slightly
indecent to them for anybody to want privacy.” (pg. 156)

“What sharp, furry ears you have, Mr. Elbraz!” (pg. 245)

There
are a couple quibbles. First, there are
a slew of annoying typos – heresies/hersies; They/Then; into/inot; chained/cahined;
and so on. But this is the publisher’s
fault (Ace
Science Fiction), not H. Beam Piper’s. I haven’t seen such atrocious editing since
the last “Tor” book I read. Maybe Ace
Sci-Fi was an earlier incarnation of Tor.

Second, Piper seems to like to inject his personal viewpoints on various
topics into the stories, and it is, quite frankly, clunky. He was apparently anti-socialism, anti-ACLU,
and anti-pot-smoking. None of which fit
very well in science fiction tales.

Finally, the storylines themselves are neither complex nor twisty, and
to be honest, they didn’t hold my interest much at all.

But it should be remembered that these stories were written in a
different era. The late 40’s and early
50’s were at the height of the Cold War and McCarthyism, and we wouldn’t want
little Timmy exposed to anything leftist whilst he’s reading a sci-fi story.

5½ Stars. Science-Fiction has come a long way since its
heyday in the 40’s and 50’s. Some
stories from way back then have worn relatively well over the years, such as
those by H.G. Wells and Andre Norton.
Alas, these H. Beam Piper ones have not. But this is not his best stuff; for that it's best to stick with his Little Fuzzy novels, reviewed here and here.

Thursday, May 11, 2017

Birte
Becker, wife of Professor Filip Becker, and mother of a teenage son named Jonas, has
disappeared. Inspector Harry Hole of the
Oslo police suspects foul play, although the possibility of her running off
willingly, say, to be with a lover in an affair, cannot be dismissed, since
there’s no sign of a forced entry or of any violence in the Becker household

The
only thing out of the ordinary in the case so far is Birte’s pink scarf. Someone, maybe Birte herself, has draped it
around the neck of a snowman in the front yard.
The snowman’s nothing special, a carrot nose, a stick for an arm, and
some black stones for the eyes and mouth.
But curiously, Jonas says he didn’t build it.

So
who did? And why?

What’s To Like...

The Snowman is a police-procedural murder-mystery set
in the greater Oslo, Norway area. There
is some jumping around of the timing – 1980, 1992, and 2004 (the present) – but
it doesn’t get confusing because Jo Nesbo alerts you to any change in the “where
and when” at the beginning of each chapter.

Harry
Hole is your standard antihero protagonist.
He drinks too much, smokes too much, has his moments of arrogance, and
can be lippy to superiors and bossy to subordinates at ill-advised times. But he’s also the best detective on the
police force, and there’s even a possibility that the murderer is deliberately
baiting him with clues and messages in order to make this a personal duel.

The
storyline is laid out perfectly, and I greatly appreciate that in any murder
mystery. There’s a slew of characters to
meet and grow suspicious about, and numerous red herrings to trip up Hole and
the rest of the police department. Indeed,
both they (and
I) frequently jumped the gun in thinking they’d caught the killer,
only to have to eat their words when it turned out to be not so. These “false trails” are essential for
keeping a 500-page novel from suffering from slow spots, and it worked nicely here.

There are some neat details.
Harry’s (and/or the author’s) musical
tastes are excellent, with some quick nods to Slipknot,
Michael Stipe (REM), the little-known Jason
and The Scorchers, and the overture to Also
Sprach Zarathustra. You’ll learn
about Fahr’s Syndrome (wiki it), and
the obscure winter sport of Curling. I
also became aware of a culture twitch in Scandinavia – apparently they like to
pride themselves for being too civilized to have a serial killer running
around. Such savagery is confined to the
more primitive parts of the world, like America.

The ending might be called "standard" – the real killer is found out,
but escapes for an action-packed finale.
Yet it was done so well, I didn’t mind that it was formulaic. There is some cussing, as would be expected
in a gritty police procedural, and some sex, so you probably shouldn’t let
little Jimmy and Susie read The Snowman. The is a standalone novel, as well as part of
an 11-book series.

Excerpts...

“Anyway, where
did he get hold of this loop gizmo? If
it isn’t approved, I mean?”

The
Snowman sells for $9.99 at Amazon, although I picked
it up when it was temporarily discounted.
The other books in the series go for $5.99-$13.99. Jo Nesbo also has a series of e-books for
kids, all involving, of all things, farts.
These go for $6.99-$7.57.

If every baby was a perfect miracle, life was basically a process
of degeneration.” (loc.
6922)

I’ve
been wanting to check out Jo Nesbo’s series for quite some time now, since I’m
a huge fan of Scandinavian Police Procedurals, and the Swedish contingent
thereof – Henning Mankell, Stieg Larsson, and Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo, are
sadly all dead or retired.

It
is every bookaholic’s delight to discover a new author that fully meets his
hopes and expectations, and Jo Nesbo was exactly that sort of find for me. The writing, translating, and storyline in The Snowman were all great, and I’m thrilled to
pieces to have a whole new series, with a burnt-out protagonist and a detective
team that isn’t above squabbling, to solve cases alongside.

9½ Stars. Time to hit my local library and see how many
Jo Nesbo book/e-books they have.

Sunday, May 7, 2017

Note : This review is cross-posted from a my review for this short story at Amazon. Hence, my standard template wasn't used. Hamilcar.

Lickety Split is a standalone, 35-page short story concerning Miss Coaly Banks, who at best can be described as "very full-figured". Marlin Williams blends a number of genres into the story - some terror, some suspense, and even some humor - but at its heart, this is a situational ethics story, examining what a person will do to gain, and keep, his/her fondest wish.

Coaly is, of course, the primary character, but it's fun to meet the couple other ones as well. They're all "gray" in character, and I liked that. I thought Mr. Simon was a hoot, I wouldn't mind meeting him again in some future story by the author. Structurally, the fun starts immediately, the pace is fast, and it has a Marlin Williams trademark "double-twist" ending, with a nice moral-to-the-story thrown in as a bonus.

8½ stars. Lickety Split does everything a short story should, including keeping me entertained from beginning to end.

Friday, May 5, 2017

1995; 277 pages. Full Title:
“Djinn
Rummy; A Work of Comic Genies”.
New Author? : Not by a long shot.
Genre : Mythopoeia; Humorous Fantasy; Spoof. Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

“In an aspirin bottle, nobody can hear you
scream.” (pg. 231)

Ah, but after he’s been freed from that glass prison, it seems like
everyone, especially his liberator, Jane, would just as soon have the genie, Kiss,
shut up. Indeed, despite now being
entitled to three wishes (with some “fine print” limitations), Jane seems
to be a tad bit disappointed by the turn of events, as she was looking to end it all with an
overdose of aspirin pills.

But
Jane is persuaded to stick it out for at least a few days longer, since her
first wish is to have an infinite number of wishes, which, frankly, will clear up a number of problems in her life. And since Kiss is a
Force 12 genie, which is an uber-powerful sort, when he says “your wish is my
command”, there’s not much he can’t do.

Like remodel Jane’s apartment. Or
wash the dishes. Or whip up something
fancy for dinner. And in his spare time,
perhaps he can even save the world from being destroyed by another Force 12 genie.

What’s To Like...

Djinn Rummyis one of Tom Holt’s earlier novels (#10 out of – to
date – 33 of them), and from the Mythopoeia stage of his
career. Being a fan of mythology, these
happen to be my favorite books by the author, and a couple others from this sub-genre are reviewed here and here.

The
author again employs his trademark storytelling format. He invents a whole new spin on the Aladdin
“genie-in-a-lamp” story, and mixes in copious amounts of his wit and zaniness. He examines the consequences of what would be my first wish upon
encountering a genie – to have a zillion more wishes, and also comes up with a clever rationalization for why omnipotent genies don’t destroy the world.

As
always, there are multiple plotlines running concurrently through the tale. Among them are: Kiss & Jane, Kiss vs.
Philly, Asaf & Neville, Kevin the Frog, Armageddon, and Asaf and the Dragon
King. In the hands of a lesser writer,
this would turn out to be contrived and confusing, but Tom Holt brings them all together
nicely for a boffo ending, and order is restored in the Universe.

The only R-rated stuff is some cuss words strewn among the crazy
goings-on, and I thought it fit in well.
Tom Holt is British, and I was lucky enough to find a “UK version” of Djinn Rummy at my local used-book store,
meaning it was written in English, not American. There was also a smattering of French, a
brief cameo by Druids, and the fascinating British expression, “Bob’s your
uncle!” All these are plusses for me.

Kewlest New Word...

Bonzer(adj.)
: excellent; first-rate. (an Aussieism)

Others : sarny(n.); bludge(v.); jip(n.); doddle(n.); recidivist(n.).

Excerpts...

A plague of
locusts. The phrase trips easily off the
tongue. But consider this. The average locust needs a certain amount of
food each day, or it dies. Nine hundred
million locusts, gathered together in one spot awaiting distribution in plague
form, need nine hundred million times that amount. Neglect to provide nine hundred million
packed lunches, and before very long you’ll have a plague of nine hundred
million dead locusts, untidy, but no real long-term threat to humanity.(pg. 111)

There is a
perfectly reasonable scientific explanation of how genies manage to transport
themselves from one side of the earth to the other apparently instantaneously;
it’s something to do with trans-dimensional shift error, and it is in fact
wrong. The truth is that genies have
this facility simply because Mother Nature knows better than to try and argue
with beings who only partially exist and who have all the malevolent
persistence and susceptibility to logical argument of the average
two-year-old. Let them get on with it,
she says; and if they suddenly find themselves stuck in a rift between opposing
realities, then ha bloody ha.(pg.
228)

“Well, stuff me for a kookaburra’s uncle.” (pg. 158)

There
aren’t really any quibbles to speak of.
At one point a character named Justin becomes “Julian” for a page or
two, but I blame that gaffe on the publishing company, not the author. And some of the threads are tied up rather
loosely, but hey, at least they were knitted together. Just you try keeping things together when the
Earth is 90% underwater, one of the protagonists can’t swim, and Romance is
only halfway up in the air due to Cupid-turned-hitman.

Overall, Tom Holt once again delivers exactly what I was looking for – a
light, enjoyable read without any slow spots, bizarre characters to meet, and a
plethora of plot threads to keep me wondering how he was going to prevent the
storyline from getting out of control.